Robert Adams - A Man Called Milo Morai

“Both of the maids I had when you were here married, and I have two new ones—a girl from Latvia and another little colored girl from Kentucky, who is lighter-complected than the old one and a lot easier to understand when she talks.

“I sure hope the Army is feeding you boys well. This new rationing they have now is just terrible, especially on meat and sugar and lard. If it wasn’t for Cook’s connections with some people at the stockyards, we would all be on very strict diets here. But if it will help win this war and get all of you boys home safe, then I say we will just have to put up with it until then.

“Milo, as you can see, I am not sending you much money, and the reason is that Pat took it into his head to invest most of the money you left with him in stocks. He bought you shares in the American Telephone and Telegraph Company and I am sending those certificates to you, instead. If I was you I would hang on to them, because they already are worth something more than what he paid for them back in 1938 and I don’t doubt but what, with the war and all, they are going to be worth way more than they are now in years to come.

“I’d send you more money if I could, but it seems that poor Pat had borrowed against his insurance money and there was just about enough left to get him decently buried and pay for masses for the repose of his dear old soul, and I’m still saving money for a stone of the kind I know he wanted on his grave, too. What with property taxes and income taxes and the extra money I have to give Cook each week to pay for the meat and lard she gets without ration coupons, I am barely scraping by here, and I refuse to touch one penny of the money that comes from the government for the boys.

“Please remember, Milo, prayers to God and His Holy Mother never go unanswered. You might also pray to the Blessed Saint Sebastian, Patron of Soldiers, and I enclose a specially blessed medal of Saint Sebastian for you.

“Our prayers are always for you, Milo. May God bless and guard you always in this war.”

There were four ten-dollar bills, a five and three ones in the package, and a silver medal on a flat-link neck-chain of silver. There was also a stiff document folder secured with a cloth tie, and in it were the stock certificates, a bill of sale, transfer documents and a receipt for something over a thousand dollars. * But a second, smaller package had come in the same mail call. This one, too, was postmarked Chicago, but there was no return address and the handwriting was large, bold and most obviously masculine.

Fingering it, Milo wondered just who it could be who had written him. Guiscarde was in New Jersey, Oster-reich was in Washington, Pat was dead, Rustung was probably interned or in a federal prison or deported long since. So who was there left whom he had known back there, back then? Sol Brettmann? Or could it be one of the other men of Sam Osterreich’s group? He tore the package open to find two envelopes. He opened the thinnest one first and read:

“Dear Sergt. Moray,

“You never met me, but I know you. I was the cop what found you when you got yourself clubbed down and robbed in Chicago. I done a awful thing to you that night, Sergt. Moray, and I ain’t making excuses or nothing, but just then that night I had a awful sick wife at home and little children too and I couldn’t barely take care of them on the money I could bring home honest-like. When I seen all of the money had been in the billfold the robbers had done took from you, I guess I went mad for a while is all. I’ve done confessed to God long since about all of this and more and I’ve done some heavy penances and all and still I know my poor soul will be in Purgatory for a good long while.

“My poor wife died a year or so back, God rest her soul. I’ve done rose up real high on the Force, too, in the last few years, and the onliest reason I ain’t started paying back what I stole from you before this is just that I didn’t know where you was and I was feared to ask them as I knew did know. But now I’m courting a fine widow-lady who does have a way of knowing your address and all and I’ve talked this here over with her and she thinks I should ought to start paying you back and so here in the big envelope is the first of your money.

“You had nine hundred and sixty-one dollars in bills in your billfold along of two gold eagles. I got ninety dollars for your gold watch and another fifty-four for the chain and fob. That all adds up to one thousand, one hundred and seventy-five dollars, Sergt. Moray. But my intended says that I rightly owe you more than that and I guess I rightly do, so she has calculated out that I should pay you three percent on all I stole off you until now for every year since I stole it and three percent on what I still owe to you after this every year until I gets it all paid off. So that means with this six hundred dollars I’m sending you here, I still owe you seven hundred and fifty-one dollars and twenty-five cents except that it will most probably be another year before I can send you more money so I actually owe you seven hundred and seventy-three dollars and seventy-nine cents.

“I ain’t going to give you my name and I recken you can figure why I ain’t, but I’ll be keeping up with you from now on and praying for you and getting more money back to you just as fast as I can, but you got to realize I still got kids to see to and, God willing, I’ll soon have me a wife again and it may take as much as two or three more years to get this all paid up. But I’ll do it and you have my sacred word of honor on that, Sergt. Moray. You boys all give them Natzis and Japs hell. You got the whole dam US of A behind you.

“A man who wronged you long ago and has been truly sorry ever since,”

In the other, thicker envelope was the six hundred dollars. No old, wrinkled bills such as Maggie O’Shea had enclosed were these, but rather crisp, minty-new twenties, thirty of them, so stiff and fresh that Milo cut his thumb on the edge of one of them, winced and instinctively sucked at the hair-thin red line. But it had closed before he got it down from his lips. His rare razor cuts on cheeks or chin closed and healed very quickly too, and he had long since given up wondering about it and just gratefully accepted the fact that he was a quicker than average healer.

Until he could get an answer from Jethro, Milo found a lodgment for the stock certificates and most of the unexpected windfall of cash in the safe of his section commander.

The return letter from Stiles was short.

“Milo, old buddy,

“Congratulations on your luck in collecting your old debt—few are that fortunate, alas. As regards the stock, wait until I see you and it. If you can wangle a three-day pass next month, let me know the dates and perhaps we two can meet at someplace in the District of Columbia, where I’ll be on training affairs. Come in mufti. I have someone I want you to meet at a place a bit south of the District, in Virginia.

“All my best,

But, what with one delay and another on both ends, it was more than two months before Milo was able to rendezvous with his buddy in the spacious, sumptuously furnished lobby of a hotel in northwest Washington. Although the man he met was lean and hard and browned, the marks of worry and age were beginning to appear on the face and forehead and at the corners of the smiling eyes. The hair at Jethro’s temples was stippled thickly now with hairs as silvery as the oak leaves on the shoulders of his carefully tailored blouse.

Without conscious thought or effort, Milo snapped to and crisply saluted his old friend.

Jethro casually returned the salute, his smile broadening, then extended his hand to grip Milo’s warmly and strongly. “I am the guy who never was going to accept an offered commission, of course, Milo. Look at me now, huh? All that the bar will sell is beer or a very inferior selection of wines, I’m afraid. But don’t worry, we won’t go dry for long. I have some cognac in the boot of my car, and far more and better at our destination. Ready to go?”